Revisit the Mullins case

Friday

Sep 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM

The mysterious death of Patrick Mullins, whose body was found submerged in the Manatee River, is officially considered neither a homicide nor a suicide. For good reasons.

Nearly eight months after Mullins' body was recovered, following an extensive search over land and water, Manatee County Sheriff Brad Steube says his office has no evidence that Mullins was murdered. No murder weapon, no witnesses, nothing.

Yet there are no definitive clues that Mullins committed suicide; in fact, there are reasons and pieces of evidence to question whether he would have, or literally could have, killed himself.

Compounding the uncertainty: Dr. Russell Vega, the medical examiner responsible for determining how Mullins died, says "the manner of death is undetermined."

The Sheriff's Office and Vega have their opinions, however. They think suicide is the most likely manner of death, according to recent reports in the Herald-Tribune by Lee Williams. Mullins' wife and family members firmly believe he was murdered.

As a result of that disagreement -- and disputes over comments made, or not made, by the lead detective -- tension has developed between the Sheriff's Office and the family. That is unfortunate and unproductive.

Open but inactive

Steube emphasizes that the investigation is open but inactive, the latter due to a lack of new evidence to consider.

Jill Mullins, Patrick's wife, contends that the Sheriff's Office did not pursue the potential for murder aggressively enough; she wants a different detective assigned to the case and a review conducted by another agency or task force.

It's understandable that Steube is reluctant to grant Jill Mullins' request. The Sheriff's Office has limited resources and nine unsolved homicide cases that occurred during the past two years. In the absence of expert opinion that the Mullins case was mishandled, it is difficult to criticize Steube's reluctance to turn the case over to another agency.

However, there is enough uncertainty about the circumstances surrounding Mullins' death to warrant a good-faith demonstration by the Sheriff's Office that it will re-examine not only the facts of the case but its approach to the investigation.

After Mullins' body was found -- following an extensive search for him and his boat -- sheriff's officials told the media and the public that the avid boater was wrapped in the rope attached to a 25-pound anchor. That information appeared to suggest that a suicide or accidental death had occurred.

But the media and public were not told that Mullins had clearly suffered a traumatic head wound. The man who discovered the body said the entire back of Mullins' skull was missing. The investigation later confirmed that Mullins had been shot; the one certain thing in this case is that the medical examiner concluded that "the cause of death is a shotgun blast to the head."

Through the media, sheriff's officials repeatedly asked the public for any information about Mullins' disappearance. But the failure to inform the public and media about the apparent gunshot wound was a missed opportunity to explicitly appeal to the public for specific information -- say, the time and location of any audible gunfire.

More questions than answers

The lack of disclosure lends credence to the argument that, early on, investigators focused on suicide as the means of Mullins' death. But it doesn't mean the Sheriff's Office ignored the possibility of murder.

"We don't have the evidence to tell us whether it was homicide or suicide," Steube told us this week.

The Sheriff's Office has offered to meet again with Jill Mullins. Perhaps it would help to have a neutral party -- say, someone trained in mediation -- attend a meeting, if it occurs.

In the meantime, the Mullins family is offering a reward for evidence about the death. We hope that anyone who has information will come forward. In a case with more questions than answers, it's beyond question that what's needed most is evidence to explain this tragic mystery.

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